Liturgical Additions: Centuries of Monastic Use

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At several points in the manuscript, different 17th century hands added new chants, usually in spaces that were originally left empty. Typically, when these chants appear in other manuscripts, these manuscripts are also dated later, after the late fourteenth century, though there is a wide geographic distribution. For instance, the second addition on p. 275, ‘Fecit Joas rectum coram…’ is also recorded in five other manuscripts on the Cantus database:

• CDN-Lu M2150 (Spanish, 16th century)
• Mbs Clm 4306 (German, 1501)
• PL-Kkar 3 (Rkp 15) (Polish, 1468)
• PL-WRzno 12025/IV (Polish, 1397)
• PL-WaN Akc. 10808 (Polish, 15th century)

Another addition, on f.210, is the chant “En verdant rutila Francisci…” Unlike the other chants included here, we could find no concordances in the Cantus database. However, this chant does exist elsewhere in Franciscan ritual and liturgical practice, as we found that it was mentioned in two other manuscripts, Manuscript 49 of the Dole Municipal Library, and MS 58 of Besançon Municipal Library.

Tracing ‘Fecit Joas…’ across six manuscripts

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In PL-WRzno 12025/IV, the earliest manuscript in the set (dating to 1397), ‘Fecit Joas…’ is likewise a later addition, though it is incorporated more subtly, with the original writing scraped and the new chant written over it. Though the style attempts to mimic that of the rest of the manuscript, the letters show significantly more rotundity and the decorated initial is done in black, as opposed to the red and blue of the other capitals. The Manuscript Department at the Zakład Narodowy im. Ossoliński, where the Ms is held, dates the addition to the 18th century. It is also worth noting that for the succeeding chant, the pre-existing decorated initial ‘R’ was left undisturbed — though it does not actually go with the ‘Unxerunt Salomone…’ chant.

Above, we see ‘Fecit Joas…’ in Mbs Clm 4306, ff. 118v-119r. We can note a difference in notation, in the absence of staff lines and the rectangular shaped notes which seem to lack stems for the most part. The writing is also clearly different, and appears later and less standardized. Curiously, the chant also goes across two pages at the bottom of the manuscript and is not contained to one like the others.

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The only manuscript on record where ‘Fecit Joas…’ is not a later addition is CDN-Lu M2150. As you can see, the script looks the same as in the neighboring manuscripts, and, crucially, on the top half of f.179r the chant has sustained the same damage as the preceding chant on the top of f.178v. What is of significance is that M2150 is the latest Ms in the set, dating to somewhere in the 16th century. This suggests that ‘Fecit Joas…’ was introduced into the liturgy some time in the 1500s, and retrospectively added to the later manuscripts we have studied.

Barnard 1 and the Counter-Reformation

It is worth noting that ‘Fecit Joas…’ as a chant was discursively used in a manner markedly different from the usage of the biblical source narrative, 2 Kings 12:2. Citing the latter, a 1532¹ confutation argues:

…Minorem sic probo. Laudavit Deus factum Joæ regis Judæ, quod accepit duas uxores. Sed accipiens duas uxores, transilivit limites naturæ. Igitur, &c. Major ostenditur authoritate sacræ scripturæ. Accepit Joiada sacerdos duas uxores Joæ regi. Et ob hoc et alia ejus facta, dictum est in laudem ejus, quod rex Joas rectu, fecerat, coram Domino cunctis diebus, quibus docuerat eum Joiada sacerdos. Quum igitur Joiada docuit Joam accipere duas uxores, in hoc rectum fecit coram Domino.
Ex iis jam liebit cernere, quam infirmum sit hoc fundamentum, et quam levi manu convelli ac amoveri possit, super quod Abel tanquam super petram solidissimam totum collocat ædificium. Verum hoc jam sublato fundamento, ut tota scilicet corruat structura superimposita, necessum est.

from ‘A confutation of Abel’s Book², written against the divorce of Queen Catharine: Contra basim libelli Abelis’ in Records of the Reformation: The Divorce 1527-1533, vol. I, collected and arranged by Nicholas Pocock, M.A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1870), pp. 517-8.

[Thus I show the descendants. God celebrated that Joas was made king of Juda, although he took 2 wives. But taking up two wives transgressed the limits of nature. Therefore &c… Therefore it is shown greater by the authority of sacred scripture. The priest Joiada took two wives for King Joas. And on account of this and other things done by him, that he had made Joas the rightful king, in the presence of the lord of all days, by the ways the priest Joas had taught him. How therefore Joiada taught Joas to take up two wives, in this he did right in the presence of the lord. 

From this now we ought to understand, that this is a weak foundation, that one can shatter and destroy with a sleight of hand, because above the most solid stone Abel places the entire building. For in truth this is necessary now with the foundation having been destroyed, that certainly all may be destroyed with the structure placed over it.]

Here, ‘Fecit Joas…’ is used in a pro-divorce, pro-Reformation piece of writing, seeking to convince the reader that if Joas could have two wives and remain virtuous, the same may be true for Henry. Clearly, this was not the inflection with which it was added into the Catholic liturgy.

Instead, it is possible that the chant was written into the set of manuscripts we’ve been studying, and introduced in the first place, as part of a counter-Reformation attempt to create greater consistency within the service, and, in this case, between the reading of Chronicles in Matins and the chants of the Divine Office. ‘Fecit Joas…’ would accord with the reading of Chronicles in the 8th or 10th Sunday after Pentecost, lending greater integrity to the service as a whole.

From the varied applications of the biblical narrative and the chant itself in this period, one thing is certain: the manuscript remained in monastic hands and in continued use during the 16th century, through the counter-Reformation and beyond.

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1. Pocock dates the Ms to 1530, but the dating has since been challenged. Indeed, the original dating is incongruous given that the confutation is written in response to a text from 1532 (see footnote 2).
2. The book in question is likely the Invicta veritas. An answere, That by no manner of law, it may be lawfull for the most noble King of England, King Henry the eight to be divorced from the queens grace, his lawfull and very wife, written by Thomas Abel, a Catholic priest martyred during the reign of Henry VIII.